It’s September, which is Spring and Heritage Month but also mine and my hubby’s birthday months.
Yay! To me this means booking all those lekker free trips that become available in this month only but it also means prepping for Christmas. Christmas is a big deal in our family and I prefer to start prepping now before prices get inflated for Black Friday “sales” and festive season madness.
This year especially I would like to have a special Christmas with my family because not only have we had a hard year but last year, Christmas was spent in quarantine — because our family were ‘poxxed’.
It began in early November when my middle daughter came home with a blister on her wrist. Parents in the know are already groaning — yes, it was chickenpox. I sprang into protocol mode: isolation, Allergex, calamine, Panado generics, and a message to her teacher.
The teacher replied with a crying emoji. My daughter was the fifth in her class, and by year-end 11 had caught it, part of a mini-outbreak that overlapped with exams.
You’re probably thinking: “Vaccines!”
Well, I’m not anti-vax — I’m pedantic about every other jab — but I’ve never been sold on the chickenpox one. It’s expensive, not on the state schedule, requires boosters, and may even be linked to shingles spikes in some countries. So, I let nature take its course.
Sure enough, chickenpox’s virality meant the others were likely doomed — except my eldest, who’d had it at two. The next day my youngest and second youngest broke into a rash.
In case you’re counting on your fingers and struggling to keep up, let me clarify, I have seven daughters.
The rash faded quickly, probably allergies, but I wasn’t sure. But first, let me explain my own bizarre immunity.
I’m the eldest of four, my mother’s sickliest child, asthmatic and allergic to half the planet, yet I never caught chickenpox despite multiple exposures — including from my youngest sister, from my eldest daughter, and even while working at Red Cross Hospital.
A blood test later confirmed I am immune, though how remains a mystery. I briefly considered the vaccine but the test spared me the decision.
Naturally, my teens hoped I’d passed this magic gene down. When my middle child recovered, second eldest taunted her mercilessly, certain she’d dodged the virus. Then, the day before her final exam, the blisters appeared. A doctor confirmed her very mild case, which only added to her smugness. Until my fourth daughter got it. She missed her prizegiving and, by the time she recovered, mid-December had arrived. Just as we thought it was over, my second eldest, the prideful mocker, caught it again — rare but possible.
I did feel for her, though. Her 15th birthday was a week before Christmas, and her beach party plans dissolved in a sea of blisters. With second eldest sick, we were officially housebound for Christmas.
As she recovered, my third eldest sprouted a blister, then my youngest on her eye, so New Year’s was equally subdued. By January we were three months into the saga, with only my second youngest untouched. Sure enough, the day before school started, a blister appeared on her lip. My excited little Grade R missed her first weeks thanks to chickenpox.
By then, the pox had finally had its one-at-a-time way with every one of my children and made last Christmas (cue George Michael) the one forever marked in family lore as the year of the Christmas Pox.
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